


to sleep in a self-made sound

by procrastinatingbookworm



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Asexuality Spectrum, Body Worship, Cuddling & Snuggling, Disability, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Kissing, Love, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:21:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29932665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: They're in love. Plenty has changed, but that's the same.
Relationships: Achilles/Patroclus (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 90





	to sleep in a self-made sound

“You’re beautiful, you know,” Achilles says, unprompted.

Patroclus stops in the middle of unpinning his chiton, letting the fabric hang off his shoulder. He turns toward where Achilles is reclining on the bed. “Is that so?”

Achilles levers himself upright. His right foot is propped on a cushion, because for all of the Underworld’s amenities, it also decided to have death-wounds ache sometimes. “I mean it, you look beautiful. This place has been good for you.”

“You mean the house,” Patroclus clarifies, fingers returning to the remaining pin.

Impatiently, Achilles kicks the pillow off the side of the bed, drawing his knees to his chest. He swallows hard before he tries to speak, but his voice still cracks. “You don’t look like you’re at war anymore.”

Patroclus had been wartime-trim when Achilles had first found him in Elysium, Achilles’ own belt cinched tight around his waist, just how he looked when he died. Ten years of soldiers’ rations had pared his natural weight down to lean muscle.

Now, he looks like he’d been allowed to come of age somewhere other than a battlefield, built solid and warm and strong.

“I suppose I don’t,” Patroclus says, letting his chiton drop and striding over to the bed. “But I think it has more to do with you than the house.”

Achilles reaches toward him, stretching his legs out to give Patroclus room to join him on the bed. “I love you,” he says, plaintively.

The mattress dips as Patroclus crawls across it, cupping Achilles’ face in his hands. His palms are wide, spanning the whole of Achilles’ cheeks. “Is something wrong?” he asks, with more patience than concern.

“Don’t mind me,” Achilles chuckles, catching Patroclus’ wrists and nuzzling into his palms, letting him brush the tears from under his eyes. “I’m just being a sap.”

“How unprecedented,” Patroclus teases. “I love you too.”

Dragging his composure back together, Achilles drops his hands to Patroclus’ bare hips, squeezing gently. “Lovely,” he murmurs.

Patroclus laughs softly, shifting sideways and dropping his weight, draping himself over Achilles without pressing down on his ankle. “Am I, then?” he says, drawing Achilles closer with one arm, holding him against his chest.

“Yes,” Achilles replies, voice coming out muffled against Patroclus’ skin. He slides a hand lower, down from Patroclus’ waist to his broad thigh.

Patroclus clicks his tongue, like he’s calling one of his hounds to heel. “Is there something you want?”

Achilles flushes, pressing his face deeper into the softness of Patroclus’ neck. “You know very well what I want.”

“Use your words,” Patroclus says, gently, but still undeniably an order.

“I want to touch you,” Achilles whines, kissing Patroclus’ throat. “I would worship you as well as any god.”

Patroclus stills a moment, then flips them over, so Achilles lies atop him. He tucks his free arm behind his head, sweeping his locs out of the way.

Achilles loves him so much that it aches.

He starts at Patroclus’ ankles, pressing a line of kisses up one shin and then the other, finding scars from long ago to fit his tongue into. He doesn’t remember where all of them came from, but he can name some, whispering the stories into pale notches in brown skin.

Here, a Trojan’s sword. Here, a bramble-bush stumbled through while chasing Achilles down the slopes of Mount Pelion. Here—Patroclus told him this, when they were relearning each others’ bodies—a dent across his knee, from the stones of the walls of Troy.

Patroclus is trembling by the time Achilles reaches his thighs. “Beloved,” he murmurs, winding a hand into Achilles’ curls, not quite tugging.

Achilles rests his cheek against Patroclus’ thigh. “Should I stop?” he asks. It comes out plaintive, as though he’s not actually asking. He will stop, if Patroclus wants him to. He won’t push, not when Patroclus is still barely comfortable with touch after so long alone.

“You can go on,” Patroclus murmurs, in the same affection-drunk tone he so often brings out in Achilles. “I’ll tell you if I need you to stop.”

Kissing Patroclus’ thighs flirts with Achilles’ Nereid instincts. There are scars, already, from times he caved and bit down, sharp and claiming. The wounds weren’t deep—even alive, Achilles had enough self control not to hurt him—but they scarred.

Achilles traces one with his tongue. The arcs of his teeth, immortalized. 

Patroclus shivers. “Achilles,” he says, petting at Achilles’ hair. “You’re so good to me.”

“I can never be as good as you deserve,” Achilles replies, half-muffled into the seam of Patroclus’ thigh.

“None of that,” Patroclus says. “Keep on, love.”

Patroclus’ cock is soft, even when Achilles kisses the base of it. Achilles doesn’t take it personally. As shades, they’re not quite corporeal, Achilles even less so than Patroclus. Only their Zagreus, warm and still living, can reliably get Patroclus hard.

There’s no need to undersell the pleasures of the flesh, such as they are in this place, but this goes far beyond that.

The pale threads of stretch marks line Patroclus’ hips and stomach. They’re ticklish, so Achilles can’t bestow them with as much attention as he wants, but he can scatter kisses across the expanse of Patroclus’ torso.

His torso, his well-muscled arms, his hands pricked with scarring. Achilles indulges himself and lavishes Patroclus, adorning him with kisses the way he’d once adorned him in armor—

The scene breaks, doused as surely as with a bucket of cold water.

Achilles blinks. Blood in the back of his throat, and rot, and salt. Weariness seizes his limbs, claws up from the crashing tide to claim him.

Patroclus reaches him first. 

Later, Achilles will realize—extrapolating mostly from the renewed pain in his ankle—that the warmth that settles over him, smothering the grief at its source, is Patroclus himself, pressing Achilles into the mattress with all of his weight.

Achilles doesn’t feel it, not yet. Only the absence of the chill.

“I am with you,” Patroclus says, his mouth a hair’s breadth from Achilles’ ear. His locs make a curtain around their faces, shielding them from even the walls of their own home. “I am with you, I will not leave you, or be taken. I am here.”

He repeats it, until Achilles can do nothing but believe him.


End file.
